Sea Stacks Quotes

He trailed off as he saw the books. Piles and stacks of them beside the sofa, another stack on the coffee table, a sea of them on her dining table. Jesus Christ, Dane, you need treatment.

These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It’s not about the rituals. It’s not about getting by. It’s about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that’s been worthwhile. You can’t measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind.

Happiness There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

The sea pokes the horizon like the tongue of a parched man, blue corroded by salt.

In this place on my own The sea outside wraps this house of stone Winter hums a chilly winter tune Brushing through the stacks of sand dunes

It's not about getting by. It's about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that's been worthwhile. You can't measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind.

On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who from the rocks of Gibraltar, the stony gateway of two worlds, watched the ship vanish into night and storm, could hardly distinguish from behind the snow the innumerable fiery eyes of the ship. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but the ship was even bigger, a many-storied, many-stacked giant, created by the arrogance of the New Man with his ancient heart.

A chill wind blew across the frozen water. There was no marker to show where the land ended and the sea began, except for the blocks of solid sea, where the water had frosted over, shifted, then frozen again. Tiny slabs of ice squatted, stacked like tombstones. We walked out onto the crusted water. The ice groaned under our feet, the rumble of an Arctic bear, warning as the dark water beneath shifted. We stopped. My heart beat in my throat. I waited for the crack of the ice, the roar of the water. The world held its breath.

It took me some time to understand it, for it was like no loom I had ever known in the halls of the gods. There was a seat, and the weft was drawn down rather than up. If my grandmother had seen, she would have offered her sea snake for it; the cloth it produced was finer than her best. Daedalus had guessed well: that I would like the whole business of it, the simplicity and skill at once, the smell of the wood, the shush of the shuttle, the satisfying way weft stacked upon weft. It was a little like spell-work, I thought, for your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free.

So they duly arrived in their grim war-graith and gear at the hall, and, weary from the sea, stacked wide shields of the toughest hardwood against the wall

I could still see the smoke stack. That's where the water would be, healing out to the sea and the peaceful grottoes.

It's a queer thing, growing up. The years pile up, Hap, but at the same time I'm still ever age I ever was. When we stood before those sea-giants, I felt five years old, awed and scared. When I see a pretty lady, I'm eighteen again! And when my bones remind me, I feel all of my sixty years. All those ages are still inside me, all at once. The years stack up like sediment, and the layers remain.

The warm invitation was just like my dad, too. He'd move a stack of papers from his extra chair and run lines with me while his computer pinged and his phone buzzed. He probably lost hours of sleep as a result. Just another kindness I'd taken for granted.

During the school year, I practically lived in Dongguk’s modern, glass-walled library, with its stacks of tantalizing books and its high-speed Internet access. It became my playground, my dining room, and sometimes my bedroom. I liked the library best late at night, when there were fewer students around to distract me. When I needed a break, I took a walk out to a small garden that had a bench overlooking the city. I often bought a small coffee from a vending machine for a few cents and just sat there for a while, staring into the sea of lights that was metropolitan Seoul. Sometimes I wondered how there could be so many lights in this place when, just thirty-five miles north of here, a whole country was shrouded in darkness. Even in the small hours of the morning, the city was alive with flashing signs and blinking transmission towers and busy roadways with headlights traveling along like bright cells pumping through blood vessels. Everything was so connected, and yet so remote. I would wonder: Where is my place out there? Was I a North Korean or a South Korean? Was I neither?

The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T’ang Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That’s how I knew I was in the right section.

Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.

He, of course, very politely took their side, insisting that he didn’t mind, and my mother asked him again if he wanted more tea and he said no, thank you, and she poured him more tea anyway, and she asked him if he wanted more food and he said no, thank you, and she filled four large Tupperware containers with leftovers and stacked them in front of him.

If a man in a smoking jacket in a coal-fire-heated library in his manor house in London can understand that life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, then how can it be denied by a man pulling a sledge stacked with frozen meat and furs across an unnamed island, through the Arctic night under a sky gone mad, towards a frozen sea a thousand miles and more from any civilised hearth?

The shelves of this store are stacked with stock. You will find a steamship, a sailing ship, and even a spaceship. There are several sorts of shoe and scores of signs and symbols. There is a sketch of a squinch, a selection of shells (not all from the sea), a siamang settled on a seat, a sponge to be studied, and sundry stuff suspended from strings. In all I included 1,234 Ss for you to see.

Hers the stillness of the forest, rooted restlessness, oak-slow, pine-quick, a seething patience. Hers the stillness of ice walls that face the sea, clear and deep, blue secrets held cold against the truth of the world, a patience of aeons stacked against a sudden fall. Hers the stillness of a sorrow-born babe unmoving in its crib. And of the mother, frozen in her discovery, fleeting and forever.

All the bright people, stopped in the midst of life, looking with forced smile into the lenses, then to be filed away, their colors fading as the years pass, caught there in slide trays, stack loads, view cubes, until one day the camera person dies and the grandchild says, “Mom, I don’t know any of these people. Or where these were taken even. There are jillions of them here in this big box and more in the closet. What will I do with them anyway?” “Throw them out, dear.

I followed all the advice my mind could compute and digested it to the best of my ability. I’d run, work out, eat healthy, and then swallow a fifth of whiskey. The man cave below my home began to look like a recycling center for Crown Royal and Jack Daniels distilleries. I discovered that empty whiskey bottles made an eerily satisfying thud when stacked up like cordwood. The sturdy glass was much thicker and stronger than my own skin, and I admired their resilience to outside forces.

It’s all supposed to be so innocent, upwardly mobile snob, designer shades, beret, so desperate to show he’s got good taste, except he’s also dyslexic so he gets ‘good taste’ mixed up with ‘taste good,’ but it’s worse than that! Far, far worse! Charlie really has this, like, obsessive death wish! Yes! he, wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won’t be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Suprmarket Amerika, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it. . . .” “Saunch, wow, that’s. . .” “It’s been on my mind. And another thing. Why is there Chicken of the Sea, but no Tuna of the Farm?” “Um. . .” Doc actually beginning to think about this. “And don’t forget,” Sauncho went on to remind him darkly, “that Charles Manson and the Vietcong are also named Charlie.

In Arizona, being Mexican hadn’t been a big deal. In fact, it was a Mexican kid who had given Celaya his nickname, “Harpo.” The kid said Celaya’s puffy hair looked like Harpo Marx’s, and Celaya had decided to embrace it. But in the Navy, Harpo’s brown skin was a problem. From boot camp on, it seemed to Harpo that Navy recruiters had stacked the ranks with corn-fed rednecks from the middle and southern states. They called him “Pancho” and “wetback” and wanted to know when he was going to crawl back into that hole in Mexico he’d crawled out of. The rednecks didn’t care that Celaya’s family had been in America for four generations.

The day came when my travels took me to Pyrrha. As soon as I set foot there, everything I had imagined was forgotten; Pyrrha had become what is Pyrrha; and I thought I had always known that the sea is invisible from the city, hidden behind a due of the low, rolling coast; that the streets are long and straight; that the houses are clumped at intervals, not high, and they are separated by open lots with stacks of lumber and with sawmills; that the wind stirs the vanes of the water pumps. From that moment on the name Pyrrha has brought to my mind this view, this light, this buzzing, this air in which a yellowish dust flies: obviously the name means this and could mean nothing but this.

Nothing to - oh! Payasam!" Tinbu dropped to his knees, recent wounds be damned, to peer through a stack of crates. He rubbed his fingers together, making a soothing sound. "Come on out, beautiful girl. I was getting worried about you!" There was a loud, pitiful meow, and then the most bedraggled ship's cat I had ever seen emerged. A skinny, rust-brown thing the color of a tool left in the sea air, its fur stuck up in clumps and it was missing an ear. Tinbu rushed to collect the cat, cuddling it close to his chest. "Did those nasty soldiers scare you?" he asked in a singsong voice. The cat made a sound between a death rattle and a wheeze in response, knocking its head so hard into Tinbu's chin it had to hurt.

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

It’s a sailors’ tradition, miss.” O’Shea approached, his thick brogue cutting through Sophia’s confusion. “The Sea King himself comes aboard to have a bit of sport with those crossing the Tropic for the first time, like the new boy there.” He nodded toward Davy, who stood to the side, looking every bit as confused as Sophia but unwilling to own to it. Quinn crossed his massive forearms over his chest, stacking them like logs. “And Triton always collects his tax, of course.” “His tax?” Sophia asked. O’Shea gave her a sly look. “Best be ready with a coin or two, Miss Turner. If you can’t pay his tax, old Triton just might sweep ye down to the depths with him and keep ye there forever.” Quinn chuckled, shooting the Irishman a knowing look. “Knowing old Triton, it wouldn’t be surprising if he did just that.” O’Shea winked at the crewman. “Could hardly blame him.

In the evenings after dinner, I set myself before Daedalus’ loom. It took me some time to understand it, for it was like no loom I had ever known in the halls of the gods. There was a seat, and the weft was drawn down rather than up. If my grandmother had seen, she would have offered her sea snake for it; the cloth it produced was finer than her best. Daedalus had guessed well: that I would like the whole business of it, the simplicity and skill at once, the smell of the wood, the shush of the shuttle, the satisfying way weft stacked upon weft. It was a little like spell-work, I thought, for your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free. Yet my favorite part was not the loom at all, but the making of the dyes. I went hunting for the best colors, madder root and saffron, the scarlet kermes bug and the wine-dark murex from the sea, and alum powder to hold them fast in the wool. I squeezed them, pounded, soaked them in great bubbling pots until the stinking liquids foamed up bright as flowers: crimson and crocus yellow and the deep purple that

I first came to Hokkaido for two reasons: miso ramen and uni, the island's most famous foods and two items on my short list for Last Supper constituents. The only thing they share in common, besides a home, is the intense fits of joy they deliver: the former made from an unholy mix of pork-bone broth, thick miso paste, and wok-crisped pork belly (with the optional addition of a slab of melting Hokkaido butter), the latter arguably the sexiest food on earth, yolk-orange tongues of raw sea urchin roe with a habit-forming blend of fat and umami, sweetness and brine. Fall for uni at your own peril; like heroin and high-stakes poker, it's an expensive addiction that's tough to kick. But my dead-simple plan- to binge on both and catch the first flight back to Tokyo- has been upended by a steam locomotive and Whole Foods foliage, and suddenly Hokkaido seems much bigger than an urchin and a bowl of soup. No one told me about the rolling farmlands, the Fuji-like volcanoes, the stunning national parks, one stacked on top of the other. Nobody said there would be wine. And cheese. And bread.

But…but that’s tragic! To go through life without color? Unable to appreciate art, or beauty?” He laughed. “Now, sweet-hold your brush before you paint me a martyr’s halo. It’s not as though I’m blind. I have a great appreciation for art, as I believe we’ve discussed. And as for beauty…I don’t need to know whether your eyes are blue or green or lavender to know that they’re uncommonly lovely.” “No one has lavender eyes.” “Don’t they?” His gaze caught hers and refused to let go. Leaning forward, he continued, “Did that tutor of yours ever tell you this? That your eyes are ringed with a perfect circle a few shades darker than the rest of the…don’t they call it the iris?” Sophia nodded. “The iris.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned forward, his gaze searching hers intently. “An apt term it is, too. There are these lighter rays that fan out from the center, like petals. And when your pupils widen-like that, right there-your eyes are like two flowers just coming into bloom. Fresh. Innocent.” She bowed her head, mixing a touch of lead white into the sea-green paint on her palette. He leaned closer still, his voice a hypnotic whisper. “But when you take delight in teasing me, looking up through those thick lashes, so saucy and self-satisfied…” She gave him a sharp look. He snapped his fingers. “There! Just like that. Oh, sweet-then those eyes are like two opera dancers smiling from behind big, feathered fans. Coy. Beckoning.” Sophia felt a hot blush spreading from her bosom to her throat. He smiled and reclined in his chair. “I don’t need to know the color of your hair to see that it’s smooth and shiny as silk. I don’t need to know whether it’s yellow or orange or red to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how it would feel brushing against my bare skin.” Opening his book to the marked page, he continued, “And don’t get me started on your lips, sweet. If I endeavored to discover the precise shade of red or pink or violet they are, I might never muster the concentration for anything else.” He turned a leaf of his book, then fell silent. Sophia stared at her canvas. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, channeling down between her shoulder blades, and a hot, itchy longing pooled at the cleft of her legs. Drat him. He’d known she was taunting him with her stories. And now he sat there in an attitude of near-boredom, making love to her with his teasing, colorless words in a blatant attempt to fluster her. It was as though they were playing a game of cards, and he’d just raised the stakes. Sophia smiled. She always won at cards. “Balderdash,” she said calmly. He looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “No one has violet lips.” “Don’t they?” She laid aside her palette and crossed her arms on the table. “The slope of your nose is quite distinctive.” His lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “Really.” “Yes.” She leaned forward, allowing her bosom to spill against her stacked arms. His gaze dipped, but quickly returned to hers. “The way you have that little bump at the ridge…It’s proving quite a challenge.” “Is that so?” He bent his head and studied his book. Sophie stared at him, waiting one…two…three beats before he raised his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Quite satisfactory progress, that. Definite beginnings of fluster.

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.

Past the projects, the land opened up and water came into view. The breeze carried rain and salt. Jetties and barrier walls supported the shore, which was stacked with crumbling brick warehouses. Out in the channel, the Statue of Liberty stood alone on her little island, her corroding flame held high in the air as the sun set over the industrial shoreline and skyways of New Jersey. Across the narrows, the bluffs of Staten Island wavered in the smoky light of dusk that turned the Verrazano into bronze. Faint light burnished water into busy with freighters and tug boats. A lone sail boat flitted in the distance. On the near shore, on a slip of water between a jetty and the land, a blood red barge bobbed on the tide.

I arrived in Bucksport Maine on the day of Maine Maritime Academy’s 2018 Graduation. Little wonder that all the hotel rooms for miles around were taken but I had lucked out again when I booked a room at the Spring Fountain Motel, just east from Bucksport, on the coastal route, U.S. Hwy 1. It had been a long day meeting, greeting and talking to owners of bookstores between here and Portland but I was happy at how successful my day was. Bucksport had not changed much from 60 years prior. I remembered how my friend and classmate Robert Kane, and I hitch-hiked through here in 1953. Add it up and you’ll see that a lot of water has flowed under the Verona Island Bridge that dominates the landscape but the town of Bucksport has steadfastly refused to change. Read on from page 376 in “Seawater One – Going to Sea” or pages 121 in “Salty & Saucy Maine –Sea Stories from Castine” and now yet another class of midshipmen have graduated! Talking to the new Innkeeper of the Spring Fountain Motel, I found that he had been a professional soccer player in South Africa and had recently lived in New York City. An interesting young man, originally for Pakistan he was working hard to live the American Dream! When I told him my story he didn’t hesitate to order a dozen copies of my books. Displaying the popular “Salty & Saucy Maine” near his cash register is just the latest way my book will become available to the summer tourists. In Bucksport it is also available at Andy Larcher’s cozy bookstore “Book Stacks” and is also at the local library which has all of my books on its shelves. “Salty & Saucy Maine!” Is catching on as a bestselling book in Maine!

I’m stacking days, building a house of cards made from nothing but days. Monday is the Ace of Hearts. Saturday is the Four of Spades. Wednesday is the Seven of Clubs. Thursday night is, I suspect, the Seven of Diamonds, and it might be heavy enough to bring the whole precarious thing tumbling down around my ears. I would spend an entire hour watching cards fall, because time would stretch, the same way it stretches out to fill in awkward pauses, the way it stretched thin in that thundering moment of a car crash. Or at the edges of a wound.

denna låt är en av de finaste låtar jag någonsin hört. herremingud va texten är vacker. det som händer vid 7:39 och efteråt är helt magiskt. denna värld förtjänar inte justin vernon, tänk att han skrivit både denna och re:stacks <3 The hills speaking softly to brag The rain is so quiet it's sad In liberty it rains so loud we can't hear It's so hard to see outside when it rains down here The arches hold together St. Louis And the mighty Mississippi splits right through us Before my arches rebuild, they must have a song But I can't proceed until the rain is gone Blue grey background on those moss green pines Heavy grown raindrops clinging to the electrical lines Floating in an atmosphere of truth and hidden lies Sometimes out here, I feel like my heroes can save my life Through the window of this ricket rail car And I see the world scene by scene The silver mountains and blue streams I will only ever smell the train steam We hear Louis Armstrong play his horn on the shortwave radio His sound breaks my heart with a stone in my throat Like a sword through a heart, leaking tears onto the ground So hard to see when it rains down here Alone, is where I been leading to be So I, just been sailing the seas The wind can blow me wherever it needs to take me The skipper taunts the sky Thunder and waves crashing into the side It will never break him, it will never save him

Other notable books on whaling—despite their age and antiquated writing style—include Alpheus Hyatt Verrill's The Real Story of the Whaler: Whaling Past and Present (1916); Clifford Ashley's The Yankee Whaler (1939), written by a whaleman and offering perhaps the best overview of the physical characteristics and mechanics of a whaleship; Samuel Eliot Morison's The Maritime History of Massachusetts (1921); and Edouard Stackpole's The Sea-Hunters: The New England Whalemen during Two Centuries, 1635–1835 (1953). The best recent book on whaling is Eric Jay Dolan's Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (2007), which views the whaling profession through a modern lens and thoroughly explores the socioeconomic aspects of whaling. Like Melville, Dolan doesn't ignore the biology of the mammal itself. In the literature of the Civil War navies, there has been a tendency to, unfortunately, glorify the same subjects, almost to the point of cliché. Hence bookshelves are stacked with discussions of ironclads, blockade-runners, and the most sensational of the sea battles. There's a reason there are so few books concerning Civil War naval logistics and the Union blockade: the work was, more often than not, mind-numbingly tedious. As one “bluejacket” humorously noted in a letter he wrote home, “We have not much to do at present and I don't know what I should do if we did not have our pig and kittens to play with.”1

These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It's not about the rituals. It's not about getting by. It's about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that's been worthwhile. You can't measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind. All that joy, all that greatness, that's God.

7. SUSHI IS ABOUT THE FISH, IDIOTS Sushi is raw fish, Fresh, oily, fatty, delicate, slightly cool, thinly sliced or expertly cubed sections of the delicious nectar of the sea. That’s the whole point of sushi. When you eat rolls slathered with cream cheese, fried onions, flavored mayonnaise, syrup, tempura shrimp poppers, mango chutney, and deep-fried marshmallows, you are missing the entire point of sushi and should just go eat at Applebee’s. (Especially on “Wings ‘n’ Waffles Wednesdays.”) When you roll your piece of sushi in a pool of salty soy sauce, stack a pile of ginger on top of your fish, or wipe the entire surface of the sushi with ewasabi, you are committing a crime against a fish, the ocean, and even the great Poseidon himself. Eat a delicious raw piece of fish, wrapped in a tiny belt of seaweed on a small bed of fluffy rice. Stir a little bit of wasabi into the soy sauce and let a small amount graze the fish itself (without using your rice as a soy sauce sponge). Enjoy the piece in one single bite, and savor the glorious explosion of seafood goodness. You’re welcome, America. And Japan.

In most cases homeport for the sailor is the port where he feels most at ease. It’s the place he longs to be and normally where his sweetheart lives. Monrovia has none of these characteristics, but like a fungus it begins to grow on you! Day after day the fungus spreads and so it was with me. As I grew accustomed to the heat and incessant rain I found that I actually enjoyed sleeping in a hammock strung under the awning on the port side of the upper deck behind the stack. On the starboards side was the lifeboat which sheltered me some from the wind and driving rain. It was comfortable and cooler than my cabin below. You might say that I was as snug as a bug in a rug. Speaking of which; the mosquitos were usually blown away when the breeze was onshore, however the prevailing winds were easterlies off the continent which still wasn’t too bad but woe was me when they stopped blowing and the atmosphere became heavy hot and humid, laden with the insect that carried the dread parasite that caused malaria. My life was carefree, the food was good and for the most part I was the master not only of the MV Farmington but also of my destiny. When the cargo was secure and I had the time I would fire up my motor scooter and head into town. Life was good and although I missed my girlfriend Nora, the laid-back atmosphere of this nearly forgotten part of the world suited me. In time I joined the ranks of Monrovia’s cadre of transient misfits, backwater sailors, and ‘Typical Tropical Tramps’ or “TTT’s” as we proudly called ourselves. It wasn’t anything I wished for, but slowly although incessantly it happened. Like the black fungus on every building in this decrepit tropical capital city, it grew on me as it did on everyone else.

Coming aboard the ship was like coming home. It didn’t take long for me to get changed into my khaki uniform and get up to the bridge. Although I was responsible for all of the various activities on the bridge, there was really very little for me to do and what little there was, was part of a well-rehearsed routine. I still had an hour before we would test the ship’s whistle, call the engine room for them to jack over the engines and then start singling up the lines. The real indication that we would depart was when the harbor pilot arrived, so I decided to go below to the pantry and make certain that there would be fresh coffee available. The first thing you always offer the harbor pilot is a hot cup of Joe. After feeling a gentle bump I looked out of the port hole and saw the black stack with a large white, block letter M on the tug's stack that would assist us with our departure. It was almost “Show Time!

It's a queer thing, growing up. The years pile up, Hap, but at the same time I'm still ever age I ever was. When we stood before those sea-giants, I felt five years old, awed and scared. When I see a pretty lady, I'm eighteen again! And when my bones remind me, I feel all of my sixty years. All those ages are still inside me, all at once. The years stack up like sediment, and the layers remain.

Apoyados por las investigaciones llevadas a cabo en el ámbito del diseño de juegos, los resultados de Jack Stack y Western Electric pueden resumirse en una simple ecuación: medición = motivación. Ver progresos en forma de cifras cambiantes convierte lo repetitivo en algo fascinante y crea un bucle de retroalimentación positivo. Vemos de nuevo cómo el acto de medir es a menudo más importante que lo que se mide. Citando al estadístico George Box: «Todos los modelos son incorrectos, pero algunos son útiles.» Es esencial que midas algo. Pero eso genera la pregunta siguiente: para sustituir la autodisciplina, ¿con qué frecuencia debe uno llevar la cuenta de las cosas? Es decir, ¿cuántas veces hay que registrar los datos para convertirlo en hábito y ya no dejarlo nunca? Según la experiencia del brillante equipo de Nike+, y según la experiencia de sus usuarios, más de 1.200.000 corredores que han recorrido más de 200 millones de kilómetros, el número mágico es 5. Si alguien registra sólo un par de salidas a correr en la página web, puede que simplemente esté probando. Pero en cuanto llega a las cinco salidas, es muchísimo más probable que siga corriendo y registrando sus datos. Tras cinco salidas a correr, ya se ha enganchado a lo que sus datos le revelan sobre sí mismo. Aristóteles no se equivocaba, pero le faltaba un número: «Somos lo que hacemos repetidamente.» Esas simples cinco veces (cinco sesiones de ejercicio, cinco comidas, cinco de lo que sea que queramos) serán nuestro objetivo. Ante la duda, la regla será el cinco.

Maybe it was my condition, but I was even more sensitive about cruelty to wildlife. When we journeyed to New Zealand to protest whale hunts, we viewed a documentary about whales attacking the whaling ships, trying to defend the females and their young. Whales are like elephants of the sea. They have family structures, mannerisms, and habits that are similar to our own. In the midst of this very emotional work in Wellington, I felt the baby move for the first time. Soon the baby was dancing around inside me both day and night. All my checkups came back favorable, and the doctor said Steve was more than welcome to glove up and help deliver the baby when the time came. Until then, though, there was stacks of filming to be done. We filmed sharks just off the Queensland coast, near where Steve’s parents had retired. Some of the crew were typical Aussie blokes. As soon as I got on board and they saw that I was very obviously pregnant, they decided to embark on “Project Spew.” To attract sharks, they mixed up a large container of chum--a gory stew made of fish oil, blood, fish skeletons, and offal. The crew would pass it right underneath my nose in an effort to make me sick. I countered them by sitting down and eating lunch right next to the putrid-smelling chum container. I knew they couldn’t break me!

WGHB started as a Clearwater, Florida radio station in 1925. By 1927, its call letters changed to WFLA and it moved to 590 AM. WFLA inaugurated its broadcasting in the Tampa area on February 14, 1955. During those early years WFLA had had several music formats including middle-of-the-road and adult contemporary music before switching to news/talk in 1986. The most popular music you heard in the Tampa Bay Area was referred to as “good music” by the retirees and although big bands were at their zenith during and right after World War II, by 1947 most music critics knew that their time had passed. Although, Benny Goodman was only 46 in 1955, Tommy Dorsey was 49 and Count Basie was 51, in many quarters they were still popular and perhaps their music always will be. I for one had my Hi-Fidelity 33 1/3 rpm multi stacked record player and a stash of vinyl long play recordings shipped to West Africa. For me time stood still as I listened and entertained my friends. Some years later I actually met Harry James at the Crystal Ballroom in Disneyland. Wow, those were the days….

It was to be the longest flight I had ever made in my young life and one of the most interesting. Having always been interested in the magic of aviation I knew that the DC-6B, I boarded was an approximately 75 seat, trans-ocean, Pan Am Clipper. It would also be the last long distance propeller driven commercial airliner. The only difference between it and the DC-6A was that it didn’t have a large cargo door in its side, and it was also approximately 5 feet longer than the DC-6A. 1955 was a good year and people felt relatively safe with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House. “I like Ike” had been his political motto since before he assumed office on January 20, 1953, even many Democrats held him in high esteem for his military service and winning the war in Europe. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked diligently trying to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He did however fail to win over Georgy Malenkov, or Nikolai Bulganin who succeeded him, as Premier of the Soviet Union in February of 1955. As a moderate Conservative he left America, as the strongest and most productive nation in the world, but unfortunately because of his lack of diplomacy and love of golf, failed to prevent Cuba from slipping into the communist camp. WFLA inaugurated its broadcasting in the Tampa Bay area on February 14, 1955. The most popular music was referred to as good music, and although big bands were at their zenith in 1942, by 1947 and music critics will tell you that their time had passed. However, Benny Goodman was only 46 in 1955, Tommy Dorsey was 49 and Count Basie was 51. So, in many sheltered quarters they were still in vogue and perhaps always will be. I for one had my Hi-Fidelity 33 1/3 rpm multi stacked record player and a stash of vinyl long play recordings shipped to Africa. For me time stood still as I listened and entertained my friends. Some years later I met Harry James at the Crystal Ballroom in Disneyland. Those were the days…. Big on the scene was “Rhythm in Blues,” an offshoot of widespread African-American music, that had its beginnings in the ‘40s. It would soon become the window that Rock and Roll would come crashing through.

The clouds rise on the horizon — lots of clouds like the empty baskets of the fruit sellers stacked on the side of the quay when winter comes — they hide the sea.

The first memory I ever have is of boxes. Boxes littering the dark, narrow hallway once filled with light. Boxes stacked higher than I am in a room that echoes the distant memory of laughter. Boxes stealing memories from each room it resides in, locking them up forever. My life belonged in boxes. Peculiar men with ironed uniforms walk in and out of my room with my memories in their hands. Memories my father and I made. Memories my mother and father made. Memories my brother and I made. Memories that no longer belong in this house. I wonder if the next family will care for my mother's hydrangeas that she planted in the front yard on my third birthday. I wonder if the next family will coat the pink walls of my bedroom with a different colour. I wonder if the next family will consist of a mother and father who love each other. I wonder, where I'm going.

There’s a large living area that opens into the kitchen at the far end, with tall windows that look over the wide expanse of sky and sea. The white linen couch and armchairs are rumpled and so soft, they threaten to swallow you when you drop into them. Braided rugs lie higgledy-piggledy, a patchwork of color over wide knotted floorboards. A fireplace is set into a brick wall, painted white and stained with smoke from years of use. There’s a stack of logs on one side and a vintage steamer trunk that’s full of blankets on the other. An upright piano stands under the staircase that leads to the second floor.

The vastness of the house lent the sense of being confined. Ethan felt like it was a huge galleon, its cargo the piled, stacked, stuffed, heaped riches, the intricate, rarefied, exquisite treasure of people who would be like gods, riding out some flood with all the riches of their court, like in the history books Mr. Diamond had taught, the boat laden, low in the water under weight of gold and precious stones and armor and boxes and baskets and chests and bureaus and vaults and iron safes crammed with jewels and rings and pendants and sacrificial silver daggers and stone altars and bills of sale for continents and oceans and nations and human beings, even the moon, and the sunlight reflecting off it, in languages he could not read and it was all to his humiliation and he needed fresh air, to be outside because it was as if Bridget led him belowdecks, as if he could hear cross timbers flexing and bracing bolts shooting into their staples behind him and the ocean squeezing the hull more tightly and feel himself heading toward the deepest, narrowest, tightest, most airless space where he would be shackled and forced to lie on his side and pant for breath and alternately roast and freeze and rub against the raw planking until his skin began to strip away and the moans of all the other souls crammed into the ship became louder than the thundering sea as the ship thudded through a portless eternity.

In a short time the boys arrived at the waterfront. At least half a dozen freighters were tied up at the long piers that extended like fingers into the waters of Barmet Bay. In front of one vessel huge piles of freight were stacked on the dock in the glare of floodlights. The ship’s cranes were busily swinging more cargo onto the pier. “Must be a rush job,” Frank commented as he parked the car. The boys walked over to watch. There was a cool breeze from the sea and the tangy smell of salt water in the air.

Bridges Life did not appear to breathe here, It was covered in endless rounds of thread of fear, So it tread quietly along the fringes, Scared that it might be the cause of collapsing bridges, Bridges that connected life with hope, And it watched these bridges from a distance placing itself on a discreet slope, But it dared not cross them, none of them, It looked at them in desperation, especially some, For it often crossed them to renew its reserves of liveliness, But now it feels pervaded by a deep feeling of sadness, Life here seems to be a part of some sort of purgatory, Waiting to cross over and leave behind this existence derogatory, It may not be a perspicuous show of feelings, But here these are life’s daily dealings, And I wonder what about life’s own posterity, Because in this land of death life somehow loses all its virility, Tamed by some obnoxious devil, Who has had a diabolic conception and then raised by some heinous evil, Maybe that is why the bridges look so frail and hopeless themselves, Bearing stacks of hopelessness displayed on hope’s own shelves, For when life does not cross the bridges of hope, It is death that forsakes life and then time withdraws its rope, That maintains the perfect cohesion, Between beginnings and ends , between fission and fusion, And when this balance is lost anywhere, Life is cast into a place where there exists life everywhere, But nothing else nowhere, Just life, no hopes, no beauty, no bliss, no summer, a life that becomes its own prisoner in this infinity somewhere, However, now the bridges have fallen, but few still stand, And life that is tired of living without hope, feels the dying hope’s hand, And like the rope of time it pulls it unto itself, and makes life cross the bridge, Thus, life once again walks on the happy ridge, Hoping to live another day, feel life in a better and different way, For living the same moment of time begets no joy, if it is lived the same way everyday, And time weaves its threads of mystery and surprises around it, Then death too gets woven somewhere in this loop of time, and life finally says, “so be it!” And it jumps into the sea of time and collects its moments of myriad experiences, While time registers all these instances, And when the loop of death unwinds, In it a new loop of life it always finds, Now, even if the bridges may fall and time may end, Life has learned to create moments of happiness that never end!

I filled every waking moment with a task; no one could say I hadn’t tried hard enough, worked hard enough, given everything I had to give. At least now I slept easily, short and dreamless nights that ended in a stack of alarms. I could no longer sense who I was, what “happy” might look like, because there was always something I had to think about.

Yogurt is good for you. And it’s just one spoon,” Sharpcot had replied, but this stack summoned a billion voices, all of them saying in a chorus, “Just one spoon.” From kids’ lunches and store shelves and desk drawers and airline meal packs, in every country of the world: Canada and the United States and Nicaragua and Uruguay and Argentina and Ireland and Burkina Faso and Russia and Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and very probably the Antarctic. Where wasn’t there disposable cutlery? Plastic spoons in endless demand, in endless supply, from factory floors where they are manufactured and packaged in boxes of 10 or 20 or 100 or 1000 or individually in clear wrap, boxed on skids and trucked to trains freighting them to port cities and onto giant container ships plying the seas to international ports to intercity transport trucks to retail delivery docks for grocery stores and retail chains, supplying restaurants and homes, consumers moving them from shelf to cart to bag to car to house, where they are stuck in the lunches of the children of polluting parents, or used once each at a birthday party to serve ice cream to four-year-olds where only some are used but who knows which? So used and unused go together in the trash, or every day one crammed into a hipster’s backpack to eat instant pudding at his software job in an open-concept walkup in a gentrified neighbourhood, or handed out from food trucks by the harbour, or set in a paper cup at a Costco table for customers to sample just one bite of this exotic new flavour, and so they go into trash bins and dumpsters and garbage trucks and finally vast landfill sites or maybe just tossed from the window of a moving car or thrown over the rail of a cruise ship to sink in the ocean deep.

The findings that were deemed believable enough to be published, however, revolutionized ethologists’ thinking. Ethologists began to speak less often of a chasm between man and ape; they began to speak instead of a dividing “line.” And it was a line that, in the words of Harvard primatologist Irven De Vore, was “a good deal less clear than one would ever have expected.” What makes up this line between us and our fellow primates? No longer can it be claimed to be tool use. Is it the ability to reason? Wolfgang Kohler once tested captive chimps’ reasoning ability by placing several boxes and a stick in an enclosure and hanging a banana from the high ceiling by a string. The animals quickly figured out that they could get to the banana by stacking the boxes one atop the other and then reaching to swat at the banana with a stick. (Once Geza Teleki found himself in exactly this position at Gombe. He had followed the chimpanzees down into a valley and around noon discovered he had forgotten to bring his lunch. The chimps were feeding on fruit in the trees at the time, and he decided to try to knock some fruit from nearby vines with a stick. For about ten minutes he leaped and swatted with his stick but didn’t manage to knock down any fruit. Finally an adolescent male named Sniff collected a handful of fruit, came down the tree, and dropped the fruit into Geza’s hands.) Some say language is the line that separates man from ape. But this, too, is being questioned. Captive chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught not only to comprehend, but also to produce language. They have been taught American Sign Language (ASL), the language of the deaf, as well as languages that use plastic chips in place of words and computer languages. One signing chimp, Washoe, often combined known signs in novel and creative ways: she had not been taught the word for swan, but upon seeing one, she signed “water-bird.” Another signing chimp, Lucy, seeing and tasting a watermelon for the first time, called it a “candy-drink”; the acidic radish she named “hurt-cry-food.” Lucy would play with toys and sign to them, much as human children talk to their dolls. Koko, the gorilla protegee of Penny Patterson, used sign language to make jokes, escape blame, describe her surroundings, tell stories, even tell lies. One of Biruté’s ex-captives, a female orangutan named Princess, was taught a number of ASL signs by Gary Shapiro. Princess used only the signs she knew would bring her food; because she was not a captive, she could not be coerced into using sign language to any ends other than those she found personally useful. Today dolphins, sea lions, harbor seals, and even pigeons are being taught artificial languages, complete with a primitive grammar or syntax. An African grey parrot named Alex mastered the correct use of more than one hundred spoken English words, using them in proper order to answer questions, make requests, do math, and offer friends and visitors spontaneous, meaningful comments until his untimely death at age 31 in 2007. One leading researcher, Ronald Schusterman, is convinced that “the components for language are present probably in all vertebrates, certainly in mammals and birds.” Arguing over semantics and syntax, psychologists and ethologists and linguists are still debating the definitions of the line. Louis Leakey remarked about Jane’s discovery of chimps’ use of tools that we must “change the definition of man, the definition of tool, or accept chimps as man.” Now some linguists have actually proposed, in the face of the ape language experiments, changing the definition of language to exclude the apes from a domain we had considered uniquely ours. The line separating man from the apes may well be defined less by human measurement than by the limits of Western imagination. It may be less like a boundary between land and water and more like the lines we draw on maps separating the domains of nations.

As one anthropologist put it, the original settlers of New Zealand, whose journey constitutes the final chapter in this great migration, “would have been heirs to perhaps 3,000 years of successful Austronesian expansion”—three thousand years of founder tales “stacked one upon the other.” Under such circumstances, what “ambitious young man of a junior line” would not seek to become a founder himself by setting off in search of his own island, no matter how far away?

These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It’s not about the rituals. It’s not about getting by. It’s about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that’s been worthwhile. You can’t measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind. All that joy, all that greatness, that’s God.

It was hard for me to believe that I had graduated from High School the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had, were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother now that I understood the routine. I really don’t know if getting a job aboard a foreign ship was easier in the “50’s” or was it that the ship needed another steward and I was willing to be a strike breaker? No one on the ship mentioned the strike and everyone treated me as just another member of the crew. Mostly everyone aboard spoke Dutch and amazingly enough I understood them. Dutch being a Germanic language was very similar to the German spoken in the lowlands, which included Hamburg. It didn’t take long before I was answering and then conversing with the crew…. Although I was on the bottom rung of the ladder I felt right at home. My bunk was at the top of a three bunk stack in the crew’s quarters, high up against the chain locker. The bathroom, called the “head” in English, didn’t have toilets or urinals. Instead I had to perfect my aim as I balanced myself over a hole in the deck. Fortunately there were places for my feet and handholds to help me stabilize myself in this balancing act. With no partitions for modesty I soon lost my inhibitions and became deft at this. At least they furnished the paper and considering it all, life was good!

Joseph shook his head. How could such a thing happen? It made him think of William Blake’s poem where a worm finds its way into a bed of luminous, red roses—O world thou art sick. He tried to divert himself by focusing on the drive. People were lining up to get tested. He watched them offer their arms to the technician; the dark-red fluid flowing from syringes into glass vials; the vials placed into plastic crates; the crates stacked one on top of another. The blood would be screened in a laboratory for the specific genetic markers on white blood cells and then compared to Emily’s. Hopefully, a match would be found.

When she turned away, he caught her hand. He waited until she looked back at him. “I need my weapons. Just in case.” “You won’t shoot me. Or stab me. Or throw one of those thingies at me.” “No.” She snorted. “How would you know? You don’t know what you’re doing half the time.” “Still.” She sighed and began stacking weapons on the bed beside the pillow. “Fine. But I’ll be royally pissed if you try to kill me again. It’s getting old.

A long mile southeast of the village of Glenarm, on the Antrim Coast Road, in the province of Ulster, there stands by the sea a monument to grief. . . .It is a natural formation of stacked limestone boulders, something like an archway, with a large aperture near its center. A local landmark, it's known as the Madman's Window. This is the story I have heard: Long ago, a woman died at sea, in the waters onto which the window gives view. There was a man who loved her, who would not accept that she was dead. From the day she went missing until his own death, he gazed through that stony window every day, hoping he would catch sight of her out there on the sea, alive, alive and calling for him. And when he saw her, he would jump into those cold waters, and bring her back to shore, back to him. It was against reason, an act of wishful thinking. An act of grief wanting to be something other than grief. There were many deaths at sea in this part of the world. Everyone else knew that the woman he loved was dead, and they believed he had gone mad. If he was a madman, it is because loss had led him to despair. It is because without the one he loved, he could not be whole, could not even imagine it. Because grief, I know can drive us mad.